While picking 20/24 of the Oscar winners this year is plenty good enough for bragging rights, it was not good enough for sole possession of the family Oscar trophy. My dad and I had the exact same ballot picking every category the same way. Despite the long odds, no shenanigans are suspected.
I am haunted by my missed picks. Here's where I went wrong.
Foreign Film-
What I picked- Waltz with Bashir
What Won- Departures
This was ridiculous. Waltz with Bashir was an innovative movie, that garnered worldwide acclaim, and the only all the flims with a wide U.S. release. And it's beaten by a movie about a out of work musician that discoveries his talents for work in a funeral home. I'll pass, and secretly count this one as a win.
Documentary Short -The Witness
What I Picked-The Witness
What Won- Smile Pinki
I took a shot at this one, and considered picking Smile Pinki, a story about an poor Indian girl who gets a surgery to repair her cleft pallette. Instead I went with The Witness a story of a man who witnessed the assasination of MLK Jr. Part of me thought that Obama's innauguartion, and racial equality being on the forefront of so many americans mind would somehow push this one to the forefront of the academy's. In hindsight that chronicles such a vile event, was probably too disonent with the optimism of the time, to have that effect.
Short Film Animated-
What I Picked-Presto
What Won- Le Maison En Petits Cubes
I should have know better. Pixar always loses these categories. That said if I picked another film, I wouldnt have picked this one. It drawings looked like they were drawn with a pencil sticking out of the cartoonists butt, and the film looked like it was used as a rag.
Sound Mixing-
What I Picked-The Dark Knight
What Won- Slumdog Millionaire
I'll cop to not knowing the difference between sound editing and mixing. I just thought The Dark Knight would sweep both the sound catergories. Doh!
I'm not from PriceWaterhoue Coopers or anything, but I was the keeper of Joe's Oscar picks, which he keeps secret because of his incredibly competitive family Oscar pool. His picks came to me at about 5 p.m. EST, three hours before the show started. Good work, Joe!
The Oscars were incredibly boring last night. To be fair, they seem to know that the show is incredibly boring, and made some big changes to try and combat the interminableness of the four-hour broadcast.
It didn't help.
That's not to say the changes were all terrible. Quite the contrary: The smaller stage, the more theatrical host, and the attempt to focus more on the actual nominees were all good. It's just the execution that was bungled.
After 81 years, this show's gotten a little musty. It's time for some radical changes to make it as entertaining as the premiere entertainment showcase of the year should be.
Here are five suggestions:
1. Cut the number of televised awards from 24 to 12.The show should present the Big Six along with Song, Score, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Documentary, and Cinematography. The rest get shuttled off to the "No-TV-But-At-Least-The-Host-Is-Hot" technical awards night. The broadcast can show some of the winners' work and acceptance speeches in a segment, but that segment can't be longer than two minutes. If you want this to be a good show, you have to get the time down to two hours, three tops. And to do that effectively, you have to lop off the minor categories. The winners still have the honor of an Academy Award, and the viewer has the honor of you not wasting their time anymore.
Still feel like you're giving the sound editors short shrift? Put samples of their work, their acceptance speeches, and even a small documentary about what they do on the Oscars Web page. That's more attention than they've ever gotten inside the Kodak theater.
That buys you time to try your Superfriends approach of having five actors give the award, but also show a clip of the actual work that was so good, it deserved to be nominated. Shocking, I know, but not everyone has seen the nominated pictures. Us normal folk don't have screeners sent to the house. Best of both worlds.
2. No more thanking everyone in the phone book. Instead, all nominees must give a list of acknowledgments to the Broadcast beforehand. If they win, those Thanks Yous will run below their smiling faces while they deliver a real acceptance speech. Use Michael Caine's speech from 2000 as an example of how to say thank you with class:
EXCEPTION: Please do thank your wife, kids, and dogs. Everyone else, to the crawl!
3. Here's an idea: Don't upstage the dead with a live musical performance. Have Queen Latifa sing live so the cameras focus on her and not the two seconds of screen time for Ricardo Montalban?You stay classy, Oscars! I give you credit for trying to shake things up, but no one ever had a problem with the In memoriam montage. In fact, it's one of the few things people stayed up to watch. Don't sully that. C'mon now.
4. Show the backstage press gaggles after commercial breaks.Kate Winslet won last night, and she gave a nice speech. In this scenario, go to commercial, and come back with her talking with the press, a little less guarded, saying something more frank and honest. It's great television! Why squirrel it away and give those nuggets to bottom-feeder shows like Inside Edition?
5. Play up the club vibe. Hugh Jackman's intoductory skit was funny and showy and set the right tone for the show:
The smaller set design made the program feel more intimate. If the oscars feel like a fun night at a club, all the better. Play the entirety of the best song nominees. Get the blood moving a little!
Those are just a few ideas. Joe, I'm sure you have some you'd like to add or delete. I'd love to hear what you think, and what any readers (do we have readers?) think as well.
I've spent the better part of the month catching up on the nominated films, and re-watching one or two more to get a better bearing on tomorrow night's show. Here is my revised list, with each category ranked in my order of preference:
Best picture
“Milk”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“Frost/Nixon”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Reader”
I finally got to see Benjamin Button on Valentine's Day, and was completely underwhelmed. It wasn't a bad movie, but there was no life to this story about a individual's life. It just lay there on the screen. It will win a slew of technical awards, and some artistic awards, like Cinmatography, but I list it fourth of five in the category.
Milk still gets my nod, because it was the best made picture, the story was so compelling, and the overall acting job by the cast was superb. It is also Gus Van Sant's best movie in years, combining his ability to tell a story with his more avante garde tendencies as a filmmaker. Slumdog is the favorite heading in, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a Best Picture/Best Director split.
Best Actor
Sean Penn in “Milk”
Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler”
Frank Langella in “Frost/Nixon”
Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor”
Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
I've seen The Wrestler and the Visitor since my past pass at the Oscars. Rourke really does give an excellent performance as Randy The Ram, and Richard Jenkins' first leading role turned out to be spectacular. This category is studded with four performances worthy of the award. So who wins? I think it actually falls the way if should.
Pitt is out. His work in Benjamin Button is good but not nearly at the level of the other four performances. So we'll slot him fifth.
This was Jenkins' first time out of the box, and despite his excellent performance, he's outshined by actors with a better pedigree in the category. He could be a dark horse, but that's only if there's a split among voters between Pitt and Rourke.
Langella turned Nixon into a Napoleon on Elba in Frost/Nixon, breathing complexity and ambition into the disgraced politician. Any other year, he's a shoo-in favorite. This year, though, he's out of luck. Chris Connelly noted in a recent Bill Simmons podcast that Langella won a Tony for the role, which may make voters view this as a role and perforamnce already rewarded.
So Rourke vs. Penn. Either way is no travesty. I think Penn actually wins or delivering an excellent performance outside of his comfort zone. Rourke's also gone out of his way to say he doesn't care either way, which can be a turnoff to the ever-vain Oscar voters.
Best Actress
No rankings
Anne Hathaway in “Rachel Getting Married” (Did Not See)
Angelina Jolie in “Changeling”(Did Not See)
Melissa Leo in “Frozen River”(Did Not See)
Meryl Streep in “Doubt”
Kate Winslet in “The Reader”
I can't rank my choices here because I haven't seen the Hathaway, Jolie or Leo films. It's too bad. Of the two I've seen, I still will back Winslet.
Best Supporting Actor
Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight”
Josh Brolin in “Milk”
Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder”
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Doubt”
Michael Shannon in “Revolutionary Road” (Did Not See)
I re-watched The Dark Knight, and I'm changing my call: Ledger wins, and not just because of his circumstances. He created one of the all-time great movie villains with His Joker. Brolin is deserving, but he'll have another shot soon. I still haven't seen Revolutionary Road, so no comment on Shannon's work.
Best Supporting Actress
Viola Davis in “Doubt”
Marisa Tomei in “The Wrestler”
Penélope Cruz in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
Taraji P. Henson in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Amy Adams in “Doubt”
I've now seen all five performances. I'm going to stick with Viola Davis, even though there's so much buzz around Penelope Cruz. Davis wrung more emotion, complexity and depth in her short screen time than any of the other four performances nominated.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona was a bad film with a few good moments. When will the Boomer critics of the world finally admit that Wody Allen has lost his fastball, and it's never coming back?
And Penelope Cruz did good work with an utterly stereotyped role, but Rebecca Hall did more with her understated role as Vicky.
Marissa Tomei was good in The Wrestler, as was Henson in Benjamin Button, but neither was good enough to catch Davis.
Best Director
“Milk”, Gus Van Sant
“Slumdog Millionaire”, Danny Boyle
“Frost/Nixon”, Ron Howard
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, David Fincher
“The Reader”, Stephen Daldry
Seeing Button didn't change my feelings. Van Sant deserves the award, but could very well lose to Boyle without it being robbery. I'll repeat, watch for a split between these movies in the dirctor and best picture categories.
Roger Ebert gives us a glimpse of life with Gene Siskel. Roger is a legend in the critic business, of course, but this piece really shows what kind of man he is, and what kind of writer. It's as moving as any elegy, but in the simple prose of a newsman.
A strong series and this one holds up really well. Where the other two may have had more interesting stories this one had more fun and compelling action sequences.Half way through though it does feel like the filmmakers were clearing the field of the other characters and making Wolverine the central character, which could have been problematic for a movie that’s supposed to be an ensemble, but it all somehow works.
“Nipples are the eyes of the face, “ and Anna Ferris is awesome.She’s been great in so many supporting roles that I’ve enjoyed, that I was excited to see this. She’s a gifted comic performer, and this movie was perfect vehicle for her mix of spacey line delivery and physical comedy.Ferris plays a Playboy playmate who gets booted from the playboy mansion on her 29th birthday (being 56 years old in playboy years, and ends up stumbling into a house mother role for the dorky girl sorority at a nearby university.She really elevates the material, which could have been on the lesser end of the spectrum of Happy Madison productions. Berto will be happy to know that despite the production company , Rob Schneider does not make an appearance.
Berto said it all really well, and for the most part I’m in agreement. Rourke’s performance is worth the ticket price. Aronovsky directs with an unflinching camera and captures the agony/ecstasy of professional wrestling, that mirrors the emotional themes of the film.I didn’t think Tomei’s performance was as good as the hype, and didn’t think Evan Rachel Wood was as bad as some of the reviews. The story was pretty predictable, and the journey of the main character was not as inspirational or moving as I expected. My disappointment might have been due to high expectations though.
I recommend this documentary highly.The film follows four, archetypalstudents through their final year of high school. We all know the school these kids go to, we all know the kids that populate the movie,the situations, and even the twist and turns. But that’s part of what makes this film so engrossing, the familiarity and honesty.The filmmakers deserve an immense amount of credit for how deftly and creatively they tell this story, and for building the relationships with these kids that allow them not only access to their lives, but invitesreally honest exchanges. Great stuff.
Mickey Rourke gives the performance of a lifetime in The Wrestler. Whether that's enough to rescue the movie from an hour and a half's worth of 10-year-old indie pic conventions is entirely up to the viewer.
Everyone's heard about the performance, but for anyone still uninitiated: Rouke plays Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a broken-down wrestling star working the weekend community center circuit for cash. Clearly past his prime, Randy nonetheless is treated like royalty by the dozens of fans and handful of other performers. It's when he leaves the locker room and returns to the real world that his true, tattered existence comes into focus. This former superstar of the 80's has been locked our of his trailer, so he has to sleep in his van. He doesn't own a phone, so he has to track down the last working pay phone in New Jersey to confirm gigs. He cries to his nebbish, mean-spirited boss for more hours at the supermarket. And he spends his night pining for the love of a stripper (Cassidy, in another strong performance by Marisa Tomei) in a third-rate club.
Even this tenuous hold on life is wrecked when Randy suffers a heart attack after a particularly brutal hardcore wresting match. Now facing the real prospoect of losing a career he rightfully lost 20 years ago, Randy reaches out to Cassidy, who in turn encourages him to reach out to his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood).
From that set-up, Writer-Director Darren Aronofsky cobbles together a plot based loosely on every indie movie you watched in the 1990's. There's the tearful initial confrontation between Randy and his daughter Stephanie, followed by an inexplicable second meeting, which leads to a tearful reconciliation, followed by a promise and a betrayal, which leads to a tearful falling out. He woos Cassidy, the stripper with a heart of gold, who's trying hard to save up money and get out of the business. They have a meaningful conversation in a bar, which is capped with laments of better times and dancing to a song inappropriate to the mood of the movie, but conveys a happier past for both of them. There's also the steeling of resolve as displayed by Randy's decision to get back in the ring one last time, even though his doctors say it'll kill him. All the old tropes are there, and Aronofsky does nothing to freshen things up.
What works are the performances. Rourke was born to play this part. A victim of his own bad decisions and some tough luck, Rourke brings a real sense of grief for lost opportunity, lost relationships, and lost pride, and is completely open and vulnerable in his scenes with Tomei and Wood. He's probably a shoo-in for the Oscar. Sean Penn and Frank Langella both had excellent performances in Milk and Frost/Nixon, respectively, but they don't have the backstory that Rourke has. That shouldn't be a consideration, but we all know that it is.
Tomei rises to the occasion, creating a parallel to Rourke's wrestler with her aging stripper. Both characters know their time in the flesh market is about up, and both aren't sure how to proceed. Tomei has quietly put together a number of strong performances over the years, and her nomination isn't entirely unfounded, although I don't think she has a real shot at the supporting actress award this year (Viola Davis was just that good in her limited screen time in Doubt). Still, she has the look and sensibility for the role, and does enough against Rourke's animal performance to make her a credible pick.
Evan Rachel Wood, however, is completely overmatched. Playing a disaffected college kid isn't the hardest thing in the world, since disaffected college kids are overdramatic and full of shit. But Wood can't manage even this, and displays either full-on rage or total submission with Rourke. The world is still waiting for the kid in Thirteen to show up again.
Aronofsky does give the wrestling scenes love, too. The shots of Randy's matches and backstage banter have a distinct documentary feel to them, reminiscent of Beyond The Mat. The Ram doesn't seem to be a direct derrivative of any former wrestling great, though he comes across as Macho Man Randy Savage with a little lucha libre style added for effect. Aronofsky captures the backstage and in-ring action well. The few embellishments, like a steroids dealer working so openly in the back room, feel a bit forced, however.
The soundtrack in this movie is great for anyone who was alive and loved hair metal in the 1980's. It's another 90's indie trick to fill the soundtrack with "Hey, I remember that!" music, but there are still a few people out there who are suckers for a good Ratt song. Whether Round and Round and Rourke's stunning work is enough to save the movie from Aronofsky's lack of imagination is unclear. See it in the theater if you are an Oscar completionist or if you love performance above all other film elements. Wait to rent it if story is your bigger concern.
Watchmen: I've had mixed feelings on Zach Synder. The man's movies have been stylistically gorgeous to look at , but have felt a little soulless. As a big time comic fan I was more then a little nervous that he was handed the reigns to what is regarded as pound for pound the greatest graphic novel of all time. I've been encouraged by the trailers and everything that's come out so far. Despite my doubts it looks like the guy's nailed it. I'm curious to see how they cut it to get it under the report 3 hour plus run time, that would surely be box office death. Now that Warners and Fox settled their lawsuit over the rights for the property the release date is set for March 6th 2009
The Expendables: I've only read rumors, but this is Sly Stallone next opus. Now anyone who knows me, knows I'm a big Stallone fan, and homer, but I haven't met anyone who didn't think his recent revisiting of both the Rocky and Rambo franchises didn't deliver. The Expendables aims to to be an ode to the bombastic action pictures of the 80's but with more modern effects. The reported cast sounds amazing, Stallone, Jason Stratham, Jet Li, Ben Kingsley, Forrest Whitiker, Mickey Rourke, and wait for it… Doplh Lundren. That's right. Freaking Drago. I'm so there opening weekend, and maybe this time my friends won't make me go see a matinee so they don't have to pay full price. No Release date yet.
Up: Pixar's track record is good enough to get my money, but the premise of this one makes me think it can be special. Something about it has a Goonies vibe to it. An old man, sets off to take the vacation he was supposed to take with his wife before she passed away. He latches thousands of balloons to his house, and floats off into the sky. The thing is, a boy scout looking to earn his "help the elderly" badge happened to be on his porch when the house takes off. One part tale of unfinished business, one part unlikely friendship, one part adventure, and a whole lot pixar style, makes me eager to see what Pixar has cooked up next. Release date is scheduled for May 2009
The Brothers Bloom: I've see the trailer for this a few times and really dig it. It has a fun Fish Called Wanda vibe, with a bit of Wes Anderson flavor (but less pretentious) mixed in. I'd watch Rachel Weisz read the phone book. The release has been delayed, which could be a troubling signal. I just have a feeling that this one can be really unique and fun. It’s scheduled for May 29th 2009
Scott Pilgrim Versus The World: Scott Pilgrim is a great graphic novel series by Canadian artist Bryan Lee O’Malley, that follows the main character's battle against his new girlfriends 7 evil ex boy friends. It’s fun mash up of manga, video game, and garage band culture, with a deep bench of fun supporting characters. This project seems to be attracting the perfect mix of talent including writer director Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame, and Michael Cera as the lead. Could be a very cool indie hit. No release date yet.
Posts
